Roses Down Under

When the weather is hot and dry it can be difficult to keep the rose garden looking good.

Did you go away over the Christmas holidays, and perhaps forget to arrange for a neighbour to water your garden? I went away for a few days in January and although the roses were watered they were showing signs of dehydration when I arrived back home. Some of the leaves were brown and brittle around the edges, a sure sign that the rose was under stress.

Perhaps worse than that, though, was the amount of rust which I found on many of the plants. Rust is a fungus disease, and I don't spray the roses much so they hadn't had any type of preventative spray applied and it showed. The roses needed deadheading when I got back into my garden, so I cut the worst affected roses back harder, taking off as much of the affected stems as I could.

Rust shows as little orange spots on the underside of the leaves. The markings show on the top of the leaves quite quickly, and eventually the orange spots turn black, and at that stage the leaves will drop off the plant. It is important to either take the leaves off before this happens, or at least pick them up off the ground, as if they are left the spores of the rust fungus will overwinter in the soil and infect the plant again next spring. Rust is a very specifric disease, so the rust that appears on say, hollyhocks or chicweed, won't spread to roses, and vice versa. Do NOT put any leaves infected with ruse in the compost bin - throw them out with the rubbish or burn them.

It is too early to take rose cuttings. At this stage there is too much risk of hot dry weather for another month or so, and unless you have a greenhouse it is almost impossible to keep enough moisture up to the cuttings to enable them to survive.

The most important this to do in the garden midsummer is to make sure you water your roses well and deeply. Roses flower on new growth, and if the plants don't get enough water the growth will stop and there won't be many flowers in the autumn.

My rose garden mid-summer

leaves showing rust

If you have any rose gardening questions, send me a question and if I can't answer it I'll refer you to someone who can.